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Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident wit is the product of art and fancy.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Funny
Accident
Art
Wit
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Compare
Contrasting
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Exposing
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More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
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To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.
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Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
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Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
William Hazlitt
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
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Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
William Hazlitt
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What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.
William Hazlitt
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Those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.
William Hazlitt
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The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.
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Habit is necessary to give power.
William Hazlitt
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Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.
William Hazlitt
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Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
William Hazlitt
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I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.
William Hazlitt
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There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.
William Hazlitt
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Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.
William Hazlitt
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I am then never less alone than when alone
William Hazlitt
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
William Hazlitt
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We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt
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When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.
William Hazlitt
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The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
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